Score: 9.0/10 [12 reviews]

Disclosure StatementFULL DISCLOSURE: A number of units of this product have, at some time, been supplied to KIWIreviews by the company for the purposes of unbiased, independent reviews. No fee was accepted by KIWIreviews or the reviewers themselves - these are genuine, unpaid consumer reviews.

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Review by: kiwiblondie (Michelle)Dated: 5th of August, 2017

This Review: 4.8/10

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I have a family history of diabetes so I am trying to be more aware of sugars and things in my food and treats. I noticed that this was advertised as natural and thought it would be great to give it a go.

My first thought when it arrived was a nice colourful packet and really loved that it is NZ made and that the information was easy for me to read as I am finding that a lot of packets are harder to read due to strange coulours or fonts but that is usually my eyes and not a fault with the packaging. I opened it and tried one plain and then gave some out to the rest of the family, most had a comical reaction, they looked at me like I was playing a practical joke on them. I found that it wasn't that sweet but also that the flavours weren't strong enough to identify. I thought that I might want to use it to decorate some baking as my daughter loves baking but I just had no energy or time to do some baking so I used some plain Marie biscuits and put some icing sugar on and then the lolly and tried it that way as I was trying to see how the product would taste with some really sweet icing. I found that I could now taste the sour in the lolly but it wasn't all that pleasing.

My mum who is diabetic said that she did enjoy the product as it was low enough in sugar for her to be able to eat some without feeling like she had overdone the sugar but that she wouldn't go out of her way to buy it either especially since she has had a look in our local supermarkets and can't find it on the shelves anywhere.

I probably wouldn't buy this again as I didn't enjoy it enough to make it a regular purchase.

Review by: traciemaree (Tracie)Dated: 10th of July, 2017

This Review: 10/10

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Oh my goodness I was excited to be able to review these fizzy bottles by Rainbow Confectionery. We are huge lovers of Rainbow Confectionery in our house as my miss 4.5 has Coeliac disease and it is really hard to find nice tasting lollies that are gluten free.

When our review package arrived my daughter was squealing with delight that she could see lollies in the review box. Her first question was 'Mum, are these gluten free?'. I turned the packet over without saying anything and she immediately spotted the rainbow loge and the rainbow flag and new exactly who these were made by and began jumping up and down while yelling "yay gluten free Mum I can eat them". Needless to say this review package made my daughter's day.

We immediately opened them and they were super easy to open. We were hit by a nice sweet aroma that came wafting out of the package. I tipped them into a bowl and it was lovely to see a mix of flavours and a good mixture of each in the packet. I tasted one of the raspberry ones to start with and my goodness it was yummy. The perfect amount of coating on each of the lollies ensured they weren't too sweet. I'm unsure where the 'fizzy' comes from as if it has to do with the sugary coating I didn't find them fizzy at all, apart from the cola one as that one seemed to be a bit more sour tasting which I really loved. Perhaps its because they are shaped like fizzy drink bottles.

I really enjoyed these lollies (as did my 4 year old). I love the bright and eye catching colours on the packaging and the super cute octopus design on the front of the bag. I feel that these bright colours would make them stand out if you were looking at them in the aisle of the supermarket and the colours are something I would be drawn to in particular.

Thanks Rainbow Confectionery for another amazing gluten free lolly product that tastes great and has such a decent price tag on them. We are definitely hooked and will be buying again.

Review by: kelly21 (Kelly)Dated: 2nd of July, 2017

This Review: 10/10

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I have many childhood memories of being allowed a 50c lolly mixture on a Saturday morning when going to visit Nana. We would go into the local dairy and be able to choose our own bag. Of course we couldn't see inside them, but it was up to you to try and pick the one that had the lollies you enjoy in them. Cola bottles were one of my absolute favourites and if I didn't get at least one in my bag I was disappointed! When I saw these fizzy bottles from Rainbow Confectionery come up for review I just had to try them to see if they can live up to my happy childhood memories.

When the bag of fizzy bottles arrived I had a wee look at the packet first. I could see very quickly that they were advertised as "awesome naturals" which means to me they haven't added anything unnatural in them. I always struggle to understand how this makes lollies better, as lollies as a whole certainly aren't healthy but I guess if you are going to have them, the more natural they are the better. It also said to me that theflavours within the lollies themselves should be quite natural. Interested to see what the "fun assortment of fizzy flavours" included I turned to the back of the packet hoping to see a list of flavours on there. I was a little disappointed to find that was no list of what flavours were in the bag, and thankfully remembered that they were listed on this listing on KIWIreviews.

I opened the packet (which was very easy to do, so easy I split right down the side of it) and tipped all of the lollies out on the bench. One thing that really bugs me is when a mixed bag doesn't have an even amount of all flavours available. I was disappointed to see that there definitely wasn't an even mix within this bag. In fact there were 22 cola bottles, 11 orange, 11 lemon lime, and only 3 of raspberry. This was quite disappointing particularly because the raspberry ended up being my favourite!

I put a couple of each flavour into a dish before putting the rest back in their bag. I decided to eat each one individually to see if there was much difference in flavour. I soon discovered there certainly was. The orange tasted just like an orange juice type flavour. The cola was the old school cola bottle flavour I remembered very well. The lemon lime was certainly a citrus flavour, although not really sure I would pick that that was what it was if I was having to guess the flavours. The raspberry was absolutely amazing, and my favourite out of all three. I did notice there was quite a different in texture with these lollies. They weren't quite the usual jelly lolly consistency, definitely not as 'sticky' as they usually are. They were coated in sugar which is very standard for a fizzy bottle lolly.

All in all it is a very good product, and it is nice to have a variety of flavours rather than just the cola. I do suggest to Rainbow that maybe they could make it a little more even on the number of each flavour within each bag as I'm sure I won't be the only person disappointed in this.

Review by: sassy121 (Amelia)Dated: 2nd of July, 2017

This Review: 10/10

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It is no secret to my close friends and family (and the local dairy owner) that I am quite passionate about eating sweet and sugary foods. I believe that lollies are definitely my main weakness. Although I like lollies, I would choose a sweet one over a sour one seven times out of ten..

When I received my review box the first item I noticed was the packet of lollies. The vibrant colours were really eye-catching and it was easy to see the brand name and the name of the product. Looking at the packet you can quite clearly see that the product is made in NZ, which is very appealing to me as I like to support our businesses. The clear window is just the right size to be able to get a glimpse at the delicious treats that are awaiting inside.

Upon opening the packet I was greeted with a nice, sweet smell. The colours of the different flavoured Fizzy Bottles was pleasant and not too bright, and there was a generous amount of lollies in the bag. The size of the bottles was just right, especially once my children decided they needed to sample them too hehe. I picked up my first one to try, it was a cola flavoured one. Usually when I have had sour lollies I have found them too overpowering, so I braced myself ready to screw up my face with the sourness. I was quite surprised when I tasted it, as the sour wasn't very strong and I found myself wanting more. Next was the raspberry flavour which I thoroughly enjoyed. Orange was next and I must admit that this was my least favourite. I found that once I finished eating the fizzy bottle it left a strange aftertaste. The flavour I most enjoyed was the yellow fizzy bottle which is lemon/lime.The lemon flavour was very distinct with a faint hint of lime.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed these lollies and believe they are good value for money. I look forward to purchasing some in the future and also trying the Milk Bottles from the same company.

Review by: kylene (Kylene)Dated: 1st of July, 2017

This Review: 8.0/10

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I love Coke and recall the fizzy coke bottles as a kid so was entrigued to sample these lollies and see if they were as enjoyable as the popular coke bottles I once enjoyed many years ago! The bag itself has a cute little window down near the bottom right so you can see into the bag and the assortment of colours of bottles it contains. I thought this was a cute addition to the packaging and a good feature to be able to see what you are actually buying rather than just an image. Opening the package it was good to see it was nicely filled with a variety of different colour lollies, often you find one colour will be more dominate and you get an overload of just that colour and it isn't always the most liked one but in this lolly bag there was a good amount of each colour so was off to a good start.

Onto tasting the assortment of fizzy bottles, I spotted a red bottle and instantly that was my go to first choice, not sure what it is but I always like red lollies so this was my first selection to sample with the fizzy bottles. It had a pleasant raspberry flavor which was easy to identify this was the flavour. Next was the coke bottles, as I expected this was a definate hit of coke flavour and instantly reminded me of those coke bottles I loved as a child. Next was the orange bottle, this was enjoyable and quiet pleasant and easy to distinguish as orange but didn't have that overly sickly taste some orange flavouring can bring. Lastly I chose the yellow bottle which I believe its flavoured to be lemon and lime however I found the lemon flavour was more noticeable in taste than the lime.

One thing I didn't like about them was the amount of sugar that is covered on the bottles, after just selecting one from the package I had a great deal of sugar crystals left all over my fingers which was a little annoying. While I did enjoy the various tastes I think I would only eat a few at a time, especially because of the amount of sugar which is coated on each one. Overall enjoyable and good value for money.

Review by: mizim (Miriam)Dated: 29th of June, 2017

This Review: 9.5/10

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I looooooove fizzy lollies, my kids have gained this same thrill, especially when they burp like crazy little mad things and fall about in fits of laughter. When Mr Nine read out the his siblings that these were fizzy lollies, they were all very excited, I did have to warn them that they probably with,don't get as gassy from these as their favourite fizzy lollies but as the kids said, 'it's still lollies, we don't care'. The kids wanted to know what flavours we could expect but there wasn't anything on the packet to tell us, so a quick pop onto this site confirmed what the flavours were.

We all agreed that the cola bottles were cola flavoured and tasted similar to the wide range of cola flavoured drinks available. The orange was nice, easy to tell what it was and not overpowering flavour wise, which made it nicer for me to eat, though I'm still not a huge orange flavoured sweets person. The raspberry was easily made out, both in colour and flavour, I loved that it wasn't sickly sweet. The hardest one was the lemon & lime bottle, we worked out it was a citrus and eventually all agreed on lemon, but none of us honed in on the lime portion of the sweet, a shame as a good lemon lime sweet is hard to find in my opinion.

I would have loved more fizz to these but other than that, yum and a great price. More please.

Review by: michelleh (Michelle)Dated: 20th of June, 2017

This Review: 9.0/10

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I love Fizzy Cola Bottles, especially if they are really, really sour so I was looking forward to trying these Awesome Naturals Fizzy Bottles. I was pleased to see they contained NO artificial colours and flavours which seems to be the 'norm' nowadays. I also liked the fact that they are proudly NZ made in Oamaru which is great if you want to support a local company. The 220 gram bag is brightly coloured and has a window where you can see the goodies inside. It also has a purple octopus eating a cola bottle on the front... if it's good enough for the octopus then it's good enough for me!

Hubby was there when I opened the pack and was keen to quality control with me! I have to say that they weren't really sour (which I had hoped for) but weren't too sugary either. When I bit into the bottle it reminded me of the 'old school' jelly babies, but a lot thinner and covered in sugar. If you ate them separately, you could taste the different flavours and cola were our personal favourites. When my daughters got their hands on them, unsurprisingly, they liked all of them! Overall these sweets proved very popular with my family. They are reasonably priced and we will be buying them again!

Review by: jopukeko (Jo)Dated: 18th of June, 2017

This Review: 10/10

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I will start this review by confessing I don't like cola although my family do. I was excited to see that Rainbow confectionery has fizzy bottles which is in their words is 'a fun assortment of fizzy flavours.' At last someone has realised that it is not just cola lovers that should have the enjoyment.

As part of the reviewing process I opened the packet and counted the contents while my children drooled.
There were 48 bottles in total: 3 raspberry; 16 orange; 13 lemonade and 16 cola. I then divided the bottles up so we all got to try the different flavours. we all noted that as well as different colours they were indeed different flavours. Miss 7 said raspberry was her favourite, while Miss 8 loved them all equally. I'll admit to being a lemonade fan and my husband a cola fan. As you can see this packet catered well for our family.

I was half expecting them to be a sour lolly as some sugar coated cola bottles are, not that I would have minded either way. I can report that they are not sour, but just the right level of sweetness for us. The other thing I was surprised to find is that there wasn't lots of sugar at the bottom of the bag which is so often the case with sugar coated sweets. This means less mess and you are not paying for sugar you won't eat.

As a Mum I was happy to discover that these sweets didn't contain artificial colours or flavours especially as one of my daughters and I react to some additives. These sweets were a hit with our family, even my husband who rarely has lollies. I will certainly be looking for them in the supermarket so we cab treat ourselves again.

Review by: samantha203 (Samantha)Dated: 13th of June, 2017

This Review: 10/10

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I always remember coke bottles from my childhood with the fizzy variety and the plain un-coated variety and they were always a fave, As a kid you had to bite the lid off and pretend you were drinking from a tiny little coke bottle because childhood is just fun like that. My 5 year old son is just as excited about coke bottles especially the fizzy variety with the sugar on the outside so I knew these would be a hit and I was not mistaken.

I was a bit worried I was not going to get a leg in the way he was munching his way through the packet telling me which colour/flavour was his favourite. I hadn't realised at first there were different flavours so was finding it interesting him telling me what flavour he thought they were. I pulled myself one of each colour out to try and tried making out the flavours I could defintely tell the traditional cola, and the raspberry and orange but the others tasted about the same. My favourite was the raspberry to which my son agreed on.

I loved the texture it was different to cola bottles I have experienced in the past but I think I preferred it. It doesn't have that huge gelatine/jelly texture and is more of a softer easier to chew variety that doesn't feel as hard to chew. The fizzy sugar coating was a good mix of fizz and sugar so I really enjoyed the level of sweetness with these. The colours are quite cool having a bit of a variety so would work quite well for children's parties and being natural colours makes it even better.

I would definitely buy them again as for a NZ made product they are great value for money and have a good quantity of lollies per bag. I think my son would have some sort of vendetta against me if I did not buy more as he was in love with this particular lolly bag.

Review by: savta (Jo)Dated: 10th of June, 2017

This Review: 9.5/10

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I had decided to bring the packet with me on a visit to Miss Seven and her family because today was her birthday so she had some friends coming over. Yesterday she had been Miss Six so this was a most exciting occasion. There would be lots of party food so it would be a good time to share these lollies. The packet is crammed full so there would be plenty to go around, and as an added bonus they are made from natural products so hopefully there would be no unexpected reactions.

Before I took the lollies along, I made sure I had tried one of each variety myself. There was a fairly even distribution in the packet which was great. (Remember fighting over the lone black jellybean in days gone by?) I liked the sour initial blast which mellowed and finally turned to sweet. All the flavours seemed to have the same transition time. However, I would avoid them if I had a mouth ulcer as they might sting!

I told them they would be playing a game called What's My Flavour? Because I had inside information, I knew what the flavours were - but the packet did not give anything away, so although one or two tried to cheat, it wasn't happening!

I put the lollies into a bowl and stood guard over it while each child in turn was issued with a blindfold and then steered towards the lollies by Miss Seven's big sister, Miss 11. One by one they took a fizzy bottle, ate it, then told me what flavour they thought it was. They were then allowed to remove the blindfold and I told them whether or not they were right. If they were correct they got a small party favour.

There were shrieks of laughter as the guests and birthday girl - nine girls and boys - had a go. They were joined by Mr Four who was not really at the party, but hovered on the periphery the whole time as he lives there! It was so much fun we did a second round. Everyone got the cola and orange flavours but the others were more elusive. Strawberry, lemon and pineapple were all mentioned, and one little girl thought she tasted banana.

We had a debrief afterwards - those who did not get a "prize" the first or second time round got one anyway as a "consolation prize". And then the remaining bottles were passed around everyone there, including Miss 11 and the three adults. Everyone enjoyed them except for one little boy who did not like the sour taste when he first put it in his mouth. He found a solution to this - he asked one of the other children to suck the sourness off it and then pass it back to him so he could eat the sweet part. I pretended I had not seen that!

I fly frequently as part of my work, so am often obliged to eat the airline boiled sweets during take-off and landing. I don't really like them but they are better than getting sore ears. I think these fizzy bottles would be far better - not so sweet, and certainly not so hard, so I plan to get some and decant them into a small container for my next flight. And if I have a child with me on the trip I will know I am not offering him something that is full of additives.

Review by: melissaandchloe (Melissa)Dated: 9th of June, 2017

This Review: 9.3/10

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I love Coke, Cola and Coke bottles so I was excited by the opportunity to review these Fizzy Bottles when I read that each bag contained 'a fun assortment of fizzy flavours', especially upon seeing some red bottles within the bag, red lollies have to be my all time favourite. With these particular lollies being free of artificial colours and flavours I didn't feel as bad eating them or feeding them to my family as I would with normal bags of lollies.

The packet I received was jam packed full of lollies, and from reading the back of it I could see that it contained enough lollies for 11 serves (obviously this would be dependant on how many lollies you would choose to eat at any 1 time). As I opened the bag up I was pleased by the assortment of colours which appeared to be evenly distributed throughout the bag, more often than not in a bag of lollies you find a majority of one colour and 2 or 3 of all the other colours, this wasn't the case here! The bag itself did not state what each of the flavours are but my family and I had fun guessing what they were and came up with the following ideas as to what we thought, brown/black was obviously cola, red was raspberry, orange was clearly orange and the yellow we thought could be lemon. Reading the list above this review I was interested to see what the flavours really were, I did wonder where the lemonade was but I now figure it was perhaps the white part of each bottle?

When it came to taste all of the bottles had quite a sweet and sour mix to them, with a bitter/sour flavour to the base of the lollies and then a lovely sweetness from the sugar coating. My family all had a favourite flavour, Miss 4 and I loved the real raspberry taste of the red bottles, whereas my partner was a fan of the orange bottles though loved them all other than the Cola bottles (he isn't a coke drinker). I felt that the flavours were distinguishable, and that they all had their unique taste. I love that there is a flavour that everyone is bound to love.

Great on there own, and also as a decoration to my chocolate-cola cupcakes I made these were a hit in my house and something which I have been asked to buy when I next do groceries.

Review by: alexmoulton (Alex)Dated: 7th of June, 2017

This Review: 8.3/10

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I love fizzy cola bottles, so I was definitely interested to see how these compared. With no artificial colours or flavours, it sounded like this would make for a good competition against the lolly giants of NZ.

First thing I noticed was that the bottles were multi-coloured, so clearly they weren't all cola flavoured. Reading the packet, it mentions a "fun assortment of fizzy flavours", but doesn't actually say what the flavours are. Even looking in the ingredient list, it only mentions "Natural Flavours". So if I wasn't on this specific page of KIWIreviews, I would have no idea what the flavours actually were. Eating them, I could taste the cola, orange, and raspberry, but the others were difficult to identify without seeing the list (I guessed something citrus-like).

The lollies are similar in size to the usual fizzy cola bottles from the supermarkets and dairy, but the main difference (apart from the colour) is the texture. These Rainbow Confectionery fizzy bottles have a much firmer feel to them. This is good in a way, because it means it gets stuck in your teeth a little less, but still feels a bit odd, when eating them the first time around.

Flavour-wise it's nice to have a variety of different flavours, But it would be nice if the flavours were a bit different. Cola & Raspberry are very easy to identify, but the other 4 flavours look similar and all taste reasonably similar, so it ends up feeling like you have a pack of citrus bottles with a couple raspberry and cola thrown in. An interesting aspect of the flavours is the natural colours, where turmeric and paprika are added, and is actually noticeable in the flavour of the lollies. Quite unique, and gives a fuller flavour. Unfortunately, there is a rather acidic aftertaste that lingers long after the sweetness has gone, so the balance of ingredients is not quite right. So hopefully the formula can be slightly altered to change this in the future batches.

Overall, the product is agreeable. But it really needs to sort out the acidity of the product, and look into a greater difference in the flavour varieties. I enjoyed them, but I won't be looking to go out of my way to buy them at the moment.

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